


To slip the surely bonds of earth (and Crete)

by Slant



Series: For the want of a risk assessment: [5]
Category: Greek and Roman Mythology, On Floating Bodies| Περὶ τῶν ἐπιπλεόντων σωμάτων
Genre: Gen, SCIENCE!, Training, health and safety
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-26
Updated: 2015-07-25
Packaged: 2018-03-25 22:02:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 557
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3826579
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Slant/pseuds/Slant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Daedalus invented a lot of things. In this story he invents ground-based training.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

"The flying wings that I have devised are delicate pieces of cutting-edge technology*. They are extremely dangerous, and untested."  
"If the wings fail, you can expect to plunge to your death. Experimental work I performed back in Athens suggests that if you land on the ground, you will splash, as you can see in this figure..." Daedalus pointed to an image of Perdix's shattered body**.  
Icarus rolled his eyes. Dad had invented images*** and was unreasonably proud of them. Honestly it was so embarrassing - everyone else's parents communicated with poetry or rhetoric a _real_ art-form with a muse.  
"Equally, if you fall from the bronze sky into the wine-dark sea, you will also splash, although it is possible that king Minos's men will recover you from the ocean before you drown, they are unlikely to treat you well."  
"If you look at the second figure, the flight envelope has a couple of features that you should be particularly aware of. The flight surfaces are strictly clear-skies, due to waterlogging problems, and there is a thermal limit imposed by the wax. The strength of the wax also imposes a maximum turn speed. I've included a number of less-well attached feathers that should allow them to failsoft; if you start shedding, straighten out and glide. The thread-attached main pinions should remain intact at any power-output that mortals can manage."  
"I've got a different power-to-weight ratio than you," Daedalus slapped his belly, "so my doghouse plot will be a bit different." He passed the cerae to his son.  
"Here, see if you can work out where my maximum altitude would be."

...

And so as rosy-fingered dawn drew back the gate to let the sun come riding up the horizon, they cast themselves from their prison-tower and trod the yeilding air with cautious foot. They circled over Crete's beaches of white sand, danced higher in the thermals while the sun was yet low and weak, and when they reached their ceiling, turned their faces to the north****. With stately glide they crossed the wine-dark sea, and hoping from island to island, made their way across the lack. They held to the middle air, above the turbulance and the wing-in-ground-effect of the waves but below the lofty heights of the jealous gods, where only the eagles soar. Their dead reckoning was spot-on and they landed in Athens in the late evening. 

Then Daedalus was arrested.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The doghouse plot is a slightly old-fashioned way to sketch out an aircraft's flight envelope.
> 
> A cerae is a wax tablet.
> 
> *Cutting-edge technology is always dangerous. For example, if you invent the saw, Daedalus will murder you. [Hyginus Fabula 39 or Pseudo-Apollodorus 3.15.8]
> 
> ** Ibid
> 
> *** Pseudo-Apollodorus 3.15.8. His love of images is also mentioned in 2.6.3, where Heracleus throws a rock at one of his portraits; this is the earliest reported criticism of figurative art.
> 
> **** Metamorphoses 8:220 for a description of their route. It doesn't make a lot of sense to me.


	2. The hot-air ballon variations: To slip the surely bonds of earth (and Crete)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Every time you write, ask: Could this scene take place in a hot-air balloon? If the answer's yes, then it probably should." - Haruki Murakami.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Any object, wholly or partially immersed in a fluid, is buoyed up by a force equal to the weight of the fluid displaced by the object."
> 
> — Archimedes of Syracuse

"But it doesn't just apply to water! you can float in anything, you just need to be big enough and displace a greater mass of fluid per unit volume."  
Daedalus was enthusing about his wonderful invention to float away from Crete again.  
"So the container is unimportant. Archimedes made some calculations for paraboloids, of various densities, and you can easily imagine them to be hollow sheets of gold... wouldn't that have been a shock for old Hiero, if his crown had been pure but hollow?"  
"Hides get sodden and sink, but inflated bladders float very well."  
"So the question was, what is less dense than air, that I could fill my bladders with it?"

"That's great Father, the philosophical underpinning for the plan is superb, but this bit here, where we sew a bag of 15,000 metrētēs and then inflate it over a bonfire. Isn't someone going to notice? It'll be more than ten pēchys high!"


End file.
